Fondue is widely enjoyed as a leisurely meal whereby the diners cook their own meat, fowl or seafood and often other items in a common pot filled with oil called a fondue pot. Each item to be cooked is impaled on a fork and placed in the boiling oil for a short period of time. When meat is the item to be cooked, it must be firmly impaled upon the fork, for upon cooking it will contract and work its way off the tines of the fork, dropping into the pot from whence it is extremely difficult to be recovered. Currently available fondue dishes have small ridges or separators which divide the dish into a number of compartments, normally for containing and confining sauces. When a diner attempts to impale a piece of meat on a fork by pushing it against one of these ridges, he usually fails. The meat slides over the separator into the next compartment covering it with sauce. When the meat is ultimately placed into the pot a scum forms on and contaminates the fondue oil. Sometimes a residue tends to accumulate in the bottom of the fondue pot causing it to intermittently boil over. It is not uncommon for diners to pick up the meat with fingers and attempt to impale it on the fork by pushing with fingers. This often results in injury to the diner when the tines of the fork pass through the meat and into the hand, usually into the meaty part of the palm by the thumb. Besides being uncomfortable to the one so injured, it usually produces a great mass of blood rendering dining extremely difficult and messy.